Joseph Hooker

Joseph Hooker (13 November 1814-31 October 1879) was a Major-General of the US Army who commanded the Army of the Potomac in the first half of 1863 during the American Civil War. Hooker is best known for his costly defeat at the Battle of Chancellorsville at the hands of Stonewall Jackson and the Confederate States Army in May 1863.

Biography
Joseph Hooker was born on 13 November 1814 in Hadley, Massachusetts, and he graduated from West Point in 1837. Hooker received three brevet promotions while fighting in the Seminole Wars and the Mexican-American War, and he pursued an unsuccessful political career during the 1850s. However, he returned to the US Army as a Brigadier-General at the start of the American Civil War, and he served as a corps commander at the Battle of Antietam in the autumn of 1862. Following the disaster at the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862 and the failed Mud March early next year, Hooker was sent to replace Ambrose E. Burnside as the commander of the Army of the Potomac in Maryland. Hooker planned an audacious campaign in Virginia against the Confederate States Army of General Robert E. Lee, but he suffered a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. President Abraham Lincoln replaced him with George G. Meade at the start of the Gettysburg campaign in June 1863, but he would continue to serve with distinction, fighting at Lookout Mountain on 24 November 1863 during the Chattanooga campaign. He would resign command when he was passed over for promotion during the Atlanta campaign, and he died in 1879 in Garden City, New York.